the motive power for small river boats, many of which are to be 

 seen on the upper reaches of the Thames during the boating 

 season. In Germany and America electricity is much used in 

 mines for haulage work ; in this country it was first successfully 

 used both for haulage and pumping in mines, by Mr. Immisch in 

 the Normanton colleries, two or three years ago. 



To Sir W. Siemens we are indebted for the introduction of the 

 electric furnace for smelting metals ; the reduction which this has 

 effected in the cost of the production of aluminium has enabled 

 that metal to be extensively used as an alloy for other metals, thus 

 not only euliancing their valuable properties, but in many cases 

 imparting to them novel characteristics. The subjects of the 

 hardening and tempering of steel is of vital interest to the gun- 

 maker ; his treatment in the manufacture of his guns being, of 

 course, largely influenced by the quality and nature of the steel 

 with which he has to deal. It is barely thirty-five years since the 

 discovery that by the addition of a fixed quantity of carbon to 

 molten iron a cheap and excellent steel could be produced. This 

 Bessemer steel is now made yearly at the rate of ten million five 

 hundred thousaud tons, as against a yearly manufacture of fifty 

 thousand tons by the old process. And in the United States the 

 Bessemer rails produce d are even double in number to those 

 manufactured in this country. To give you some idea of the 

 magnitude of the steel rade in the present day, I will mention a 

 few statistics relative to the works of Messrs. Krupp, the famous 

 German gun makers. The works at Essen cover one thousand 

 acres, the number of men employed being twenty-five thousand, 

 who live in the Krupp village of eight thousand cottages. The 

 works contain four hundred and thirty-nine steam boilers, four 

 hundred and fifty steam engines, eighty -two steam hammers, 

 eleven large furnaces, and one thousand five hundred and forty- 

 two smelting stoves. The amount of iron ore used daily is one 

 thousand five hundred tons, and the consumption of fuel is four 

 thousand tons of coal or coke per diem. 



Before quitting the subject of steel, I will draw your attention 

 from the " mfinitely great " to the "infinitely small," namely to 

 the manufacture of steel pens, for the production of which eighteen 

 tons of steel are used daily in this country alone. The invention 

 of steel pens was due, like so many other inventions, to a trivial 

 accident. In 1880 Mr. Gillott, who was then a working jeweller, 

 accidentally split up one of his fine steel tools. Being suddenly 

 in need of a pen, he used the spoiled implement as a ready sub- 

 stitute, and found it answered so admirably that it suggested to 

 him a new departure in the manufacture of pens. It is said that 

 the firm of Gillott alone produces as many pens in a day as all 



